A Day at the Mansion
by Be Kat
Summary: What happens during Spring Break when Xavier and Scott leave the Mansion? Beast discovers he is flammable, Bobby gets attacked by Jubilee, and Jean ignores everything.


"Hey Jean?"

Jean looked up to see the new student (what was his name? - oh, Bobby Drake, the one with ice) poking his head through the slightly open doorway. His blond hair was in it's usual disarray, and his pale blue eyes held a concerned expression. With a deep internal sigh Jean closed the copy of _Jane Eyre _she had been reading and turned her attention to Bobby. With Xavier and Scott gone for the day and most of the students away for spring break she was in charge of the mansion. "Yes? Is something wrong?"

"Dr. McCoy locked the lab and won't let me in."

Jean frowned thoughtfully. Hank had been the one to save Bobby when his mutation surfaced out of control at his choir practice. Ever since the boy had held something like hero worship for the furry blue doctor, following him around everywhere and sitting in the lab to watch him work. She sighed again and put the book out of temptation's way on the end table. _:And Mr. Rochester was just about to ask her to stay with him too, I can just tell. They can kill the nutsy wife and get married. I've been waiting for it, and now it's finally going to happen, and they'll live happily ever after: _She had never read the novel before, and was keen to see the end she thought was in sight.

"Well, he may just need some time alone Bobby. Or he could be doing a dangerous experiment that he doesn't want you around for."

Bobby shook his head. "Naw, he said he needs a vacuum cleaner and a brush. That doesn't sound like an experiment to me."

Jean threw a surreptitious longing look at the volume she had relinquished only a few seconds earlier. "I'm sure he's fine. I would suggest just leaving him alone for a while." She finally gave in and snatched the book back off the table, her eyes devouring the next paragraph. Bobby pulled his head back just in time as the book hit the wall next to the door. He fled down the hall away from Jean's screams of "Noooooooooo! Jane, you idiot, just kiss him! You love him, now act like it!"

Bobby decided to try someone without a heavy book to throw at him. Storm perhaps? She would be out in her green house this time of day. He plodded halfway across the lawn before remembering all those sharp tools handily lying around the garden. He made a hasty about face and thought perhaps Jubilee would help. She was waiting for him around the corner to the girl's dormitory.

"Jubes?"

"Robert Drake, I'm going to kill you!"

Oops, he had forgotten about the hair dye he slipped in her shampoo. Well, he was a busy guy, how was he to remember _every _prank he pulled? Just then Jubes came out of hiding, her hair a brilliant platinum blond, brandishing a curling iron and scissors. Bobby beat a hasty retreat down the mansion's hallways, finally resorting to freezing the kitchen door closed behind him. He flung open the only other exit - a window - to the sound of Jubilee's frenzied pounding and screams. Scrambling around the corner, he crawled in another window just in time to see explosions of sparklers escaping from the now open kitchen door. "Booobbbbyyyyy!"

Running to the stairs, he was standing outside the lab door before he remembered the entire reason for his earlier wanderings. "Dr. McCoy, this is Bobby! It's an emergency!" He pounded on the door frantically, realizing there were no other escapes in the underground corridor. Jubilee must have heard him, as a few seconds later a firework appeared at the bottom of the stairs. He started to kick and hit the door, desperate. "Please!"

A huge blue furry hand opened the door just as an irate little blond Asian turned the corner. Bobby flung himself inside the room and, snatching the doorknob from the kind doctor's hands, shut the door with a resounding _clang_. The explosion against the metal panel just afterwards proved the intelligence of the act. Panting, Bobby slid down the wall, finally looking at his rescuer. It wasn't until he realized he had frozen in mid pant with his tongue hanging out that he managed to close his mouth.

Blue fur covered the lab, great hunk and balls of it in the numerous trash cans, and the image standing before him was unlike what he normally saw when entering the lab. Dr. McCoy stood before him clad only in shorts, his fur standing out in clumps. Blue strands floated in the air around him, and the brush clutched in his hand was clogged with the silky blue stuff. Bobby stammered.

"Dr. McCoy? Wha, what happened to you.?"

Dr. Henry McCoy, also know as the Beast, scratched his head disconsolately. "Apparently with the onset of a warmer season my secondary mutation is reacting in the manner of animals when they are exposed to high temperatures."

Bobby gaped. He was used to not understanding much of what his hero said, but that was so entirely unintelligible he couldn't help himself. "Huh?"

Beast sighed. "I'm shedding."

"Oh."

A silence fell as Bobby realized just how much fur there actually was. Besides the brush and the trash cans, there was also several large piles on the desk usually cluttered with papers and a huge beaker full on a shelf. "Wow."

Beast sighed again and returned to his brushing. Within two strokes the brush was so full of fur he had to pull it out and add it to the steadily growing pile on the desk. Another explosion hit the lab door.

"May I inquire what you have done to infuriate Jubilation so entirely?"

Bobby groaned. "I put hair dye in her shampoo. I thought she would look good as a blond, but instead she looks like a dumber version of Jubes."

Beast continued brushing. Another five strokes and he had to empty the brush again. The third explosion was even louder, and a test tube fell over as the room shook slightly. Hank set it upright again only to have fur from his arm liberally sprinkle the surface of the lab counter as he reached over it. "You ought to apologize expediently, before she decimates the laboratory."

The door burst open, Jubilee glowing outside. She shrieked with primal rage as she launched a firework directly at Bobby head. It missed and hit the pile of fur on Beast's desk instead, which instantly caught fire. Bobby ran screaming from the room as Henry tried to beat out the flames with his fur-covered brush. The brush burst into flames just as another explosion hit the elevator, cutting the cables and effectively trapping Bobby inside. Unfortunately for Jubilee, the doors were closed by then, locking her out. Screeching futily, she continued to bombard the closed doors as Hank stumbled out of the lab soaking wet. The sprinklers, responding to the unusual amount of non-chemical induced smoke, had gone off. Shaking his head, all he managed to do was fling hunks of wet blue hair all over the walls and Jubilee.

Jean, upstairs, heard the fire alarm go off below her. She held out a finger to the empty room and yelled, "One minute! I have three pages to go!"

Downstairs the situation was becoming worse. Hank, having left his glasses in the lab, couldn't open the door which was locked from the inside. He stumbled towards the stairs in an attempt to get help, leaving a trail of wet blue fur behind him. Jubilee had calmed down enough to start aiming her fireworks at the crack in the elevator where the door closed. Inside, Bobby was very closed to wetting himself and had frozen the entire elevator surface in an attempt to keep the door from opening under the Asian's continued bombardment. The alarm in the lab turned off as the last of the blaze was extinguished.

Outside, Storm nicked her finger as she started at the latest explosion coming from the mansion. The weather goddess yelped and dropped the potato she was cutting for planting. Instantly, clouds formed over the mansion, and a bolt of lightening barely missed the stumbling Dr. McCoy as he found the door to the outside. Thrown to the side, he lay unconscious in a gathering layer of hail. Meanwhile Storm, wrapping her finger in a dirty seed package, decided she had had enough of this and stuffed a potato eye in each ear. _:Bobby and Jubilee can solve their differences without me for once:_ The storm stopped, leaving two inches of hail and furry blue doctor on the lawn.

Jubilee, finally giving up, threw one last firework at the elevator and ran upstairs, slamming the door to her room. She started tunneling under her bed, trying to find some black hair dye she had thrown under there a few months ago.

Bobby, hearing the explosions stop, realized he had frozen himself in the elevator with eleven inches of ice between him and freedom. He started to yell for help, but was unheard through several feet of concrete, elevator, and ice by Jean, who was the only remaining adult in the house.

Jean, having just finished _Jane Eyre, _was suitably happy with the ending and ran to find her copy of _Wuthering Heights _in the attic. She emerged with a dusty box of Jane Austen, Charlotte Bronte, and Charles Dickens volumes. Locking herself in the study with the books she decided to read them all before emerging.

**One Hour Later **

Scott stepped out of the vehicle and opened the side door for Xavier, starting the lift to allow the professor out of the van. As they came around the corner in the dark evening, they saw Storm steadily working in the lit greenhouse with a carrot seed package rubber-banded around her finger and a pair of sprouting potato eyes exuding from her ears. They shot each other a surprised look, but kept walking, only to see Dr. McCoy laying face up on the lawn in the middle of a giant puddle, clad only in a pair of shorts. Next to the blue body a large scorched area indicated where Storm's lightening bolt had hit. Scott ran over to revive him as Xavier, getting a feeling of impending doom, rolled his wheelchair to the open doorway.

Inside, a trail of blue fur marked the rambling Henry's path. Xavier followed it to the elevators, one of which wouldn't work. Frowning, he used the other only to emerge into several inches of water from Bobby's melting ice barrier. Bobby had given up calling for help and was instead pounding on the ice at the door with his shoe. More blue fur was liberally splattered on the floor and walls as well as burn marks and dents on the lab door and the wall surrounding the elevator entrance. Xavier sloshed through the water into the lab, ignoring Bobby's repeated efforts to extract himself from his cold prison. Once inside, he stopped in amazement. Every surface was covered in wet, partially burned, blue fur.

Upstairs, Scott had partially revived the unconscious Beast and was assisting him through to the door. He left his furry friend in the kitchen, where scorches on the table indicated Jubilee's displeasure. Running to his room, he stopped to navigate over the pile of belongings Jubilee had thrown into the hallway as she searched for the black hair dye. She had given up a few minutes before they arrived home and taken Scott's motorcycle to go to the city and get her hair dyed. Reaching his and Jean's apartments, he was shocked to hear a "Don't you dare, Elizabeth! AHHHHH! He still loves you, you stupid cow!" from Jean who was reading _Pride and Prejudice_. A dusty box and pieces of _Wuthering Heights _(which Jean had ripped up and thrown around when Heathcliff did something she didn't like on page 46) were spread all over their bed and a small fire had been lit in the bathtub from the pages of _Sense and Sensibility _where Lucy Steel tells Eleanor that she is engaged to Edward.

Xavier closed his eyes and attempted to calculate the costs of fixing the mansion and came up with a figure at the same time as Scott, who had been thinking of the cost of replacing the Professor's signed 1st editions of Wuthering Heights and Sense and Sensibility. They both paled and resolved to never leave the mansion again.

Just another day at Xavier's School for the Gifted.


End file.
